


and into the night

by Lydia_Martin_trash



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Past Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-24 01:13:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18560920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lydia_Martin_trash/pseuds/Lydia_Martin_trash
Summary: Sansa looks for Theon before the battle for the dawn begins.





	and into the night

**Author's Note:**

> Last night's episode was truly an excellent bit of television, and the song at the end killed me dead. I've been listening to it on repeat (the title is from it), and Theon and Sansa are cuties, so this happened. Entirely show-canon, which is new to me. Enjoy and let me know if I missed a tag.

For a minute, Sansa pretends to read the latest reports on their provisions and calculate how they’ll fare with the new people who have arrived as late as this night. The frown on her face might even fool the steward or Brienne, if she were to arrive, but she can’t fool herself. She abandons her desk and goes to the yard.

It’s good to be seen, to be present, even though the winter wind cuts what little of her skin is exposed. Her people look to her and if she can’t inspire hope, at least they know now that she means to see the night to the end with them, and that is worth something. This is her place as a Stark of Winterfell. She must be strong for all of them.

Yet she lets her feet carry her to the place where she is Sansa first.

She does not know whether this is how Theon sees her… she doesn’t know whether she even can separate from her family name, or if she wants to. Maybe she’ll always be a Stark first to him as well, but in his presence it doesn’t matters as much.

He spots her first; when she finally finds him, he’s looking at her from where he’s standing among his Ironborn, propped against a battlement wall. Even now her heart swells to see him, as it has been doing every time they’re in the same room together or when she lets herself think of him. When she starts walking in his direction, he does the same. They met halfway.

“Theon,” she says.

He nods in his new serious, intense way, but says nothing else. The silence lingers for a heartbeat, and Sansa smiles, more to herself than for his benefit.

“Won’t you share a cup of wine with me before I go to sleep?”

“I think neither of us is going to sleep tonight,” he says with the slightest hint of a smile, the smallest wisp of innuendo an echo of the flirty youth he had been a lifetime ago.

The girl she had been would never have put herself in a position to hear his lines, she is certain. She wouldn’t be moved by his words. And she wouldn’t bite her lips to keep a pearl of inappropriate laughter quiet. But now she does all of this. How the world turns.

_ Would that we were to stay awake to lay together, _ she thinks. If it wouldn’t break herself and Theon to try, she would offer.

“Even so,” she says. “Share it with me if you will.”

The smile at the corner of his mouth lasts longer this time, though it’s still far too soon to part.

“Lead the way, Lady Sansa.”

They don’t find wine, but they find a parsnip soup that is watery indeed and a place near a fire that makes up for it. People are talking all around them, eating their own share, shouting instructions, carrying weapons and lumber and furs, but Sansa feels as if they’re alone, the only two people in the world.

She wants to talk to him. To tell him everything that has happened to her since they were last together, to have his opinion and to hear his tales and know all the things he’s done. It’s clear that the Iron Islands have been good to him, if perhaps not kind. It’s not properly a jolt to find he is handsome again, she has known him forever, but she’s more appreciative now. He’s gained nearly all his weight back and looks solid and strong, healthy. His hair is darker and unruly and looks terribly soft, softer than hers, and she wants to let her fingers caress the locks away from his sad eyes.

She wants to hear his voice most of all, and she’d listen to any story to have that happen.

They stay quiet instead. But the silence is not awkward; it’s comfortable. They just eat and look at each other and stay together, basking in what shared warmth is to be found. Sansa lets herself really look at Theon and memorize his face, though she’s never forgotten it. Whatever else may come, they’ll always have this.

When he’s done eating, he lowers the utensils to his lap and stares at her. He can’t, or won’t, hold her stare for too long, but at least he no longer looks pained to do it at all.

“Would you like more?” she asks, reaching for his bowl. “We are not rationing it yet.”

He rests a hand over hers, light and far too brief, as he shakes his head.

“Sansa, where is your family?” he asks, tilting an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t you rather spend this time with them?”

Bran is in his chambers and inside his own mind again and Arya is surely running about, though never truly underfoot anymore. Jon is with his dragon queen, or with his friends, she hopes. Sansa knows all of this, and she also know the right answer to give him. It even coincides with the truth.

“No. I want to spend it with you.”

Theon looks confused to hear this, though not surprised. The emotion on his face quickly turns to flattery, however, and he gives her another smile, a more heartfelt one, she judges. It makes her feel silly and young, how proud she is to have put it on his face.

“Unless you’d rather stay with your men?” she makes herself ask.

It doesn’t surprise her to see him shaking his head again, though she’s pleased by it all the same.

“Not my men. My sister’s,” he corrects, still not comprehending, not seeing that they had willingly followed him to certain death as surely as he has followed her. “They have known each other all their lives, most of them, and they have each other. I’ll stay with you, if you’ll have me.”

“You know I will,” she says, nearly breathless, seizing her chance. “I’d have you for forever if I could.”

_ That _ surprises him. She tells herself it’s the surprise that causes the withdraw, small as it is, when he leans away from her, and not some instinctive rejection. He of all people, he’d be the last to be disgusted by her. Though he had been witness to it… he had suffered Ramsay’s attentions too.

“Sansa, I… I’ll fight for Winterfell and for the Starks, you know that I want– that I need to make up for all that I did, but please don’t ask me… please, my lady, I can’t pledge myself to your house again.”

The regret heavy on his eyes clench at her heart and she reaches for his hand this time, holding it on hers until it passes some.

She’s acutely aware now of Robb’s shadow sitting between them. She always carries him around, him and Rickon and her parents, and she had known Theon has his own ghosts. She hadn’t known Robb was one of them.

Her lips tremble, as does his hand. She tries to think of all she could say to soothe him.  _ You’ve already made up for everything. Robb loved you, he would forgive you. He wouldn’t want you to suffer so.  _ If only there was a way to make Theon believe those things, but he probably never will.

But she can’t let her brother’s memory tear them apart. She’d have it bring them closer, if anything.

“That’s not how I meant it,” she whispers. “I was raised to marry a prince, did you know?”

Theon looks at her then, an intense gaze that warms her from the inside. He’s so intent in his incredulity that he forgets himself. He doesn’t look away, nor does he holds back a sharp smile that makes him even more handsome.

“I’m hardly a prince now.”

“Is your sister not the queen of the Iron Islands?” Sansa asks, smiling back at him. “Do the ironborn use different titles?”

“Sansa...” He’s trying for warning, she can tell, but his amusement hinders the words too soft. “You would surely grow tired of me by summertime.”

_ I wouldn't _ , she thinks.  _ I’d be happy beside you _ .

“It’s no matter. We don’t have much longer,” she says.

It’s the first time she’s allowed herself to say it aloud, to acknowledge it. She’s been doing nothing but pretend otherwise, looking for a future, planning for tomorrow, for hers, if not for herself, but she knew, in her heart. Winters in the north are deadly enough without supernatural threats, without magic and dragons and the undead. They won’t live to see another day, more likely than not. Certainly not summer.

Saying it is not freeing, though; it only brings dread to the forefront of her mind until Theon squeezes her hand back and reminds her how solid and warm he is.

“We must believe,” he says, not unkindly. “Or we are already defeated.”

“Believe me, then.” She holds tighter onto his hand. “I’d have you and I’d make love to you if I knew how.”

He keeps looking at her, silent, for a long time. A considering look. He’s a man like any other at the end of the day, and she knows herself to be beautiful and desirable. Any other and she’d be scared, too hurt from the things in her past. Even with Theon, she’s not sure she’d be able to try, not now, but nevertheless, it doesn’t scare her to see the hunger in his eyes. A part of him is hers already, even if nothing comes of it. Maybe that’s why she feels a spark of arousal within herself, growing insistent the more he looks.

Before, Theon had had many women and bragged openly about it. That sort of knowledge is not something that is lost. She might not know what to do, but he would.

The beating of her heart nearly drowns his words. She has to lean forward to hear.

“You know. We are making it, right now.”

She can blink at this. His smile has lost the edge of amusement, but it looks fond instead. Sansa finds she rather likes it.

“Sharing a meal and conversation because we want to be next to each other. Choosing to be together when we could have been somewhere else. This is love, isn’t it? And we made it.”

Sansa snorts, relaxing despite herself. She welcomes the intertwining of their fingers together when Theon rearranges them.

“I suppose that’s one way of seeing it,” she concedes, feeling strangely light. “Did you learn it in your travels? Or in the Iron Islands?”

Theon shakes his head again.

“I learned it from you.”

When he leans forwards, she lets her eyelids close a little, expecting – hoping – for a kiss, but his lips touch her ear instead.

“We’ll take our time after. We’ll do it the other way too.”

She smiles and buries her face in his neck, letting his smell surround her and overpower the wood burning so near, feeling his hair ticking her cheek, as soft as she had imagined.

It’s the most content she’s been in ages.

That’s when the horns sound three times.


End file.
